Sayings
by Omnicat
Summary: A cross. A girl. A war. (A Middie Une fic.)


**Title:** Sayings

 **Author:** Omnicat

 **Spoilers:** _Episode Zero_

 **Warnings:** Implied child-prostitution and other nastiness.

 **Characters & Pairings:** Middie, Trowa, Middie's family.

 **Summary:** A cross. A girl. A war. (A Middie Une fic.)

 **II-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-I-oOo-I-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-II**

 **Sayings**

 _Thou shalt not kill._

 _(Not even God?)_

Middie Une used to go to service in her youth. She would put on her best dress every Sunday, walk to church with Mother and her little brothers, bend her head, fold her hands and dutifully say words she did not understand. She read the lyrics of the songs off the page and wondered what they said, what it felt like to have the look in her mother's eyes which meant she knew. Her gaze used to stray, and she would stare up at the large, coloured windows and one day gather up the courage to ask Mother if that was what TV looked like when she was a girl. That was when she was childish and easily bored.

Now she is ten years old. Now her mother is dead and she only remembers the smallest and most simple things. She remembers, understands, and wonders.

 _Thou shalt not lie._

 _Thou shalt not steal_.

 _(Never?)_

Now her father is sick and her little brothers are hungry. She remembers the small and simple sayings her mother had, and she knows she cannot obey them. It's her father's sayings she needs to live by, now. Her father is broken - he broke his back in the factory, and whenever he takes a drink he says he broke his heart when Mother died, and the neighbours say he broke his mind somewhere in a bottle. But he is still alive, and it's up to Middie to make sure they survive even now that Father is broken in so many places.

Her father's sayings are just as hard to understand as her mother's used to be. It makes her sick to her stomach when she tries to get close enough to hear.

Somehow she manages to take care of them all, though. Father, little brothers, even herself. She gave up her toys to find work, but there was no work to be had. So she swallowed her pride to beg, but as the war drags on even the generous have less and less to spare. She lets people touch her when they offer the things she needs, and remembers her mother's voice, saying those are bad places, and runs when she can. When she can.

The soldier, like all the others, says he will give her money if she does something for him. Middie has heard this many times, and once again can only hope that it is true.

 _Turn the other cheek._

 _(Turn from what?)_

There is more food with the mercenaries than there was at home, and more work too. They took her in because they could afford it, and now it is as if she is invisible. She came to them with evil clutched in her hands, hands that used to fold and beg and touch, hands that are tiny in theirs, and they do not see it. After Mother died and Father broke, Middie watched as the dirt came onto them, and the white slime, and she can already picture the blood.

The preacher she used to ignore told her that the war will doom them all. He stroked her head, then pushed it down.

But nobody sees what has happened. Nobody sees it coming.

 _Love thy neighbour as thou loves thyself._

 _(Yes!)_

Middie is disgusted with herself. She has found the perfect saying. She can do anything if she lives by this one.

The cross she gives to the boy without a name. She does not want to touch the good memories it holds with her hands. She does not want to feel how different the bad things that keep her and her family alive make it from the one her mother used to wear.

And maybe she wants to give it to him to make him just like her. Maybe she wants his saying to be true, even though she knows it cannot be. She has her Mother and her services and all those other things he does not; he cannot see the evil, like she can.

Her mother's sayings said what she should do; her father's told her what needed to be done; No-Name's says what he wants things to be. Middie doesn't want to do any of that, so the only thing she says is what she will do.

"Here you go. Now God will watch over you."

He does not see the evil, like she does. It will not touch him.

 _Do unto others as you would have them do unto you._

 _(No. I want to die. Please, not that one.)_

No-Name has never had a mother and little brothers, or bent his head and folded his hands, or said prayers he didn't understand. He has never gone to Sunday service to see the picture windows. He does not know of those old, abandoned sayings.

So why does he still obey them?


End file.
